Fling is Amazon’s forgotten answer to Google’s Cast protocol used by the Chromecast. It allows apps to send video and other content from a mobile device to the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. My buddy Jared Newman just published a good article about Amazon Fling that you should read, where he examines the current state of the service and talks to streaming companies, like Plex, CBS, and Pluto TV, and asks them why they don’t support Amazon Fling. The consensus seems to be that they either see no point in supporting Fling when they already have a native Fire TV app, or that they just aren’t aware of Amazon Fling. Read more ›

Miracast, Google Cast, Chromecast, AirPlay, Amazon Fling, and DIAL are all different protocols that allow you to wirelessly send video from one device to another. Some are open standards, while others are proprietary protocols. Some work with the Fire TV out of the box, others can be made to work through third-party apps, and others are incompatible with Fire TV devices. This article will help you understand the differences between the protocols and how they relate to the Amazon Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. Read more ›

In an effort to get more smartphone app developers to include Amazon Fling support into their apps, Amazon’s developer blog has highlighted a few apps and a couple SDKs that currently support the media receiving feature built into the Amazon Fire TV. It’s often difficult to uncover apps that support Amazon Fling, since it’s rarely mentioned as an available feature in an app’s description. Developer will mention adding Fling support in their update log, but that gets overwritten the next time the app gets updated. Here are the apps Amazon has highlighted. Read more ›

BubbleUPnP is a very popular media streaming app for Android smartphones and tablets. The app has a 4.3 out of 5 star rating with over 1 million installs on the Google Play store. The developers just pushed an update last night which added support for Amazon Fling, the new casting protocol from Amazon that lets you easily send media to the Fire TV and Fire TV Stick. BubbleUPnP can send media to your Fire TV device from various sources like UPnP/DLNA media servers, local Android storage, cloud storage, browsers and more. There’s even a server application you can install on your Mac or Windows PC, similar to Plex, to have easy access to all your media. It’s also worth noting that the app also works with the Chromecast, yet the developer says flinging media to a Fire TV Stick is better than casting to the Chromecast, which is great news for the relatively new Amazon Fling protocol. Check out BubbleUPnP if you have an Android device and want a new way to send media to your Fire TV or Fire TV Stick.

Amazon has announced a new SDK for developers called Amazon Fling which allows Android and iOS apps to “cast” media to the Fire TV. The Fling SDK also allows developers to build companion apps that remotely work with apps on the Fire TV. At its core, Amazon Fling gives Chromecast-like functionality to the Fire TV, but can be leveraged to do much more. Read more ›